You're making a huge assumption yourself - that the goal of communication is to appeal to the greatest number of readers. This is not always true and often deliberately not always true.
"Appeal to" and "being understood by" are two different things.
You can write a text that appeals to a small audience, but is understood by a big audience.
You can also write a text that would appeal to a big audience - but doesn't because no one understands it.
It's not hard to write a text that can be understood by a large audience. Using an analogy that only some people understand is counter productive as analogies are used exactly to allow the audience to illustrate the problem.
The core of my response was not about appealing vs understanding, but about the objective function being to max(number) with whatever operator (appeal or understand)
But you demonstrated that in a beautiful way with your misunderstanding! How wonderfully meta! QED
Some of the best pieces of art are when a smart person wants to communicate a subversive idea to another smart person without anyone pedestrian arcing up. It can lead to wonderful comedy.
You can write a text that appeals to a small audience, but is understood by a big audience.
You can also write a text that would appeal to a big audience - but doesn't because no one understands it.
It's not hard to write a text that can be understood by a large audience. Using an analogy that only some people understand is counter productive as analogies are used exactly to allow the audience to illustrate the problem.